Much like the Joni Mitchell song lyrics "You don't know what you got til it's gone," Arkansans are about to say goodbye to one of their rights currently protected by one of the strongest laws of the land.
Arkansas' Freedom of Information Act is considered one of the best in the country for transparency and for the public's access to government information and should be protected. This legislative session, there have been targeted attempts to weaken our existing law. These changes, if they become law, will be an impossible barrier for many Arkansans.
In 1967, Winthrop Rockefeller's leadership helped create the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act to protect the transparency and openness of government. For 54 years its core mission to require that meetings be publicly posted and open to the public, and most government information be given to the public on request has remained largely unchanged.
Senate Bill 346 will open Pandora's box. It will allow government to charge fees to individuals for public records that are unheard of today.
Do you have a loved one who struggles with mental health or addiction? If they have an encounter with law enforcement and you ask for the recordings of that encounter, today you would receive this information at no charge. If SB 346 passes, you could be paying hundreds of dollars for this same information.
Why is this needed? That's a good question. According to the Association of Arkansas Counties, there is a need to cover the cost of body cameras, storage, redaction of video and reproduction that must be covered by the public.
But wait, isn't that what county budgets are for? Yes, the personnel and equipment to complete these requests are included in the police, sheriff and jail operations budgets. How are those budgets funded? Through your tax dollars.
There has been no indication that cities and counties have been able to fully flush out these costs to date. No county or statewide estimate has been provided to show the true costs necessary to store data, personnel to produce and redact, or equipment needs.
Law enforcement agencies and our county governments should be looked upon as governmental entities that provide information willingly and as a service to the community. We already pay taxes to support them and all of these agencies should be working to establish community trust by facilitating information exchange, not creating impediments to obtain it.
Let's pause for a moment and consider that many Arkansans struggle to make ends meet and live paycheck to paycheck, where even a minor difficulty can be disastrous. Forty-one percent of households in Arkansas are working hard but are unable to make ends meet. Too many (17%) are in poverty. For those who are concerned about over-taxation and government overreach, this is when you come in. Never before have Arkansans been asked to pay such fees for the public records they already paid for with their tax dollars. And what about our retirees and those on fixed incomes? Having to pay an up-front charge would create an incredible hardship.
What this bill does end up impacting is the public's ability to access their own records because they are too poor to pay. That is an often-occurring theme around the state.
County jails are overcrowded and bursting the budgets of local counties with individuals accused of crimes, but not convicted, sitting in pretrial status, because they are too poor to pay their bail to buy their liberty. Now, we are asking the taxpayers, and especially the working poor, to come up with funds that just don't exist for access to their own information.
There's also the issue with the amount of time a record will be kept. Last session, Act 1028 enhanced the FOIA and called for the audio of public meetings to be recorded and kept for one year. The audio and visual recordings in this bill are only to be kept for 30 days because of the amount of storage space that would be needed and associated costs ... except, we've still not estimated how much storage space might be needed and what that cost might be.
If last session, it was thought to be prudent to keep meetings on record for one year, then why does 30 days seem sufficient for these records?
It may be pesky and time consuming to provide community members with information, but it is very important and necessary in the pursuance of good governance.
Sarah Moore of Fayetteville is a co-founder of the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition, which seeks to end mass incarceration and inspire public involvement in the justice system, and depends on access to public information to evaluate government funding and decisions.